Quality 0f Life Disease Impact Scale (QDIS^®) Summary

JWRG’s Quality of Life Disease Impact Scale (QDIS) is a cutting-edge solution for measuring health-related quality of life (QOL) impact in individuals with chronic conditions. QDIS fills the gap between specific biomarkers and symptoms that do not capture QOL impact and generic QOL surveys that are less responsive to disease-specific QOL impact.

QDIS offers a unique approach by making attributions to a specific disease or condition, which has been shown to be valid in the presence of 9 out of 10 comorbid conditions. The items can be aggregated (e.g., QDIS-7) to more reliably estimate QOL impact attributed to a specific condition or using an individualized single item (QDIS-1) weight for each comorbid condition reported.

QDIS is the first measure of its kind to standardize QOL impact scoring across conditions, enabling the first individual-level multiple chronic condition (MCC) total QOL impact estimate (QDIS-MCC). This estimate can be a continuous score or a five-category impact stratification, making it easy to understand the total QOL impact implications of comorbid conditions.

All QDIS scores were normed in representative samples of the U.S. chronically ill population in 2020 and transformed to have a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10, enabling norm-based interpretations. 

Results from US general population and clinical studies show that QDIS increases validity in discriminating across clinically defined severity groups and better responds to changes in severity for each specific disease studied, in comparisons with generic QOL measures.

At JWRG, we strive to provide reliable and valid solutions for measuring health-related quality of life. Our Quality of Life Disease Impact Scale (QDIS) is a comprehensive tool that helps individuals, healthcare professionals, and researchers understand the impact of chronic conditions on daily life and overall quality of life.